Hi Folks
Yep it's old kiwigold back again. (Trev from New Zealand) some of you may remember me from days gone by.
73 years old now. Had a dose of throat cancer diagnosed late last year, 30 treatments of radiation seems to have sorted that out. And my prognosis is good. After a long absence from chasing gold have decided to get back into it. Ha ha one last fling lol. Before the body gets to tired or my back craps out. Small scale I must admit. No more underwater dredging for me. I will be working the banks for mainly fine gold. Have put together a system utilizing a mid western prospectors dry land suction nozzle. Now down to a two and a half inch suction nozzle. Guess I won't be shifting much eh. But at least everything is a lot lighter than what I used to use. And I don't expect to make a fortune. More of a paying hobby if I am lucky. Will flick some pics up, when I get on the river and everything running.
Now back to the Subject heading. A guy here in NZ got hold of me, wanting two ounces of as pure as he can get beach gold, not pure as in purity,but not contaminated with to much black sand. Now I don't do beach mining any more, that was years ago. Like about 20. But I have a mate who still does. And maybe able to help. But we all amalgamate our concentrate. End up with a blob of gold sponge, which we then melt. Now somewhere years back on one of the gold forums. I recall seeing a mention of how to convert gold sponge back into free running gold. It may have been, soak in lemon juice or vinegar for a while. But not sure on that. My memory ain't what it used to be. So can anybody assist who knows of the method or knows someone that does.
I have attached a pic of some gold sponge I had. Sadly I turned that into a little blob of melted gold. A whole .58 of a gram. Yahoo I'm rich. So I can't experiment with it.
Good to be back. Although I do read the forum from time to time, haven't posted for several years.
Cheers Trev in New Zealand.
